In 1932 the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century wrote an urgent letter to the century’s most influential psychologist. In that letter, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud, “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” It was the same year that the German electorate made the Nazis the strongest political party in Germany, only one year before Adolf HIn 1932 the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century wrote an urgent letter to the century’s most influential psychologist. In that letter, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud, “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” It was the same year that the German electorate made the Nazis the strongest political party in Germany, only one year before Adolf Hitler’s remarkable rise to power. Freud’s long and elaborate reply was greeted by Einstein with unrestrained enthusiasm. He called Freud’s letter “truly classic… something altogether magnificent....

A fascinating pamphlett with insightful and increasingly pertinent to the present day reflections, from two of the most iconic figures of modern culture.The year is 1932, Hitler has almost risen to power and, while in deep water, Einstein and Freud share their anguished, competent, yet feeble attempts towards a wisdom they (admittedly) can't grasp, on one of the most pressing issues of their day. War.Einstein, convinced that besides man's social drives for connection and unity he also "has within him a lust for hatred and destructiveness", asks Freud if it is possible to languor this drive by means of mental development. This is not a cry for educating the masses, he clarifies, showing perceptive judgement in a comment that holds a dear place in my heart:"Here I am thinking by no means only of the so-called uncultured masses. Experience proves that it is rather the so-called "Intelligentzia" that is most apt to yield to these disastrous collective suggestions, since the intellectual has no direct contact with life in the raw, but encounters it in its easiest, synthetic form—upon the printed page."Even though Freud admits incompetence in answering the question (as he did in Civilization and Its Discontents) his insights are synthetic and profound. What follows is a review of the hidden connections between "might and right", arguing that "right" (i.e. law) is essentially "the might of a community", and of "Death and Eros", two sides of the same coin:"These are, as you perceive, the well-known opposites, Love and Hate, transformed into theoretical entities; they are, perhaps, another aspect of those eternal polarities, attraction and repulsion, which fall within your province. But we must be wary of passing overhastily to the notions of good and evil. Each of these instincts is every bit as indispensable as its opposite and all the phenomena of life derive from their activity, whether they work in concert or in opposition. It seems that an instinct of either category can operate but rarely in isolation; it is always blended (“alloyed,” as we say) with a certain dosage of its opposite, which modifies its aim or even, in certain circumstances, is a prime condition of its attainment. Thus the instinct of self-preservation is certainly of an erotic nature, but to gain its ends this very instinct necessitates aggressive action. In the same way the love-instinct, when directed to a specific object, calls for an admixture of the acquisitive instinct if it is to enter into effective possession of that object. It is the difficulty of isolating the two kinds of instinct in their manifestations that has so long prevented us from recognizing them."Having set the tone of what being human-all-too-human means (being full of deceptive contradictions) Freud hints towards an unavoidable conclusion. As long as the inherent instinct of destruction is not hindered or, rather, transformed enough by civilisation, there will always be war. Both men agree: love is wise, hatred is foolish. And yet, there is no certain plan for action:"How long have we to wait before the remainder of humanity turns pacifist? Impossible to say, and yet perhaps our hope that these two factors—people’s cultural disposition and a well-founded dread of the form that future wars will take—may serve to put an end to war in the near future, is not chimerical. But by what ways or by-ways this will come about, we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is working also against war."Reading the exchange almost a century later, some of the practical issues that are raised seem dated but they are not really. The League of Nations is now the United Nations. What is perhaps different is the series of failures that in our present inhibit the skeptical optimism discerned in Einstein's call for action. Gramsci's dictum that we should have "pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will" comes to mind, as the ever sensible threshold.

José Oroño2019-02-03 05:15

Eminently readable, devoid of needless jargon, and extremely short. Here we find, perhaps, Freud’s clearest exposition of the Eros-Thanatos duality, his ‘account’ of the origin and nature of (political) power, his hypothetical ‘state of nature’, and, first and foremost, his views on history and progress. Freud’s rather simplistic take on history and his reductionist approach to power (it’s all violence sanctioned by either a handful of strong individuals or the vast majority of the community) makes me wonder how the Frankfurt School went about reconciling his views with that of Marx.

Amazing how the views of these two great minds about war with its causes and manifestations on the collective human community still resonates to this day. This is a timely read given the current situation of the world today and how leaders of nations vie for their lust of power and self interests at the expense of destruction and loss of lives of the people they are supposed to 'represent' and protect. Both are pacifists as revealed in these exchanges wherein while they thought about the capacity of men to violence and destruction, they both sought ways to understand the causes and how to prevent such disastrous calamities from happening (which as they admit, were beyond their capacity to thwart).

Previous to reading this book, I had no idea that Einstein and Freud were connected. Their exchange of ideas about the nature of human beings and war are fascinating. For a non-native speaker, the German was a little dense but manageable.

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Albert Einstein Sigmund Freud - In 1879, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich by 1909. His 1905 paper explaining the photoelectric effect, the basis of electronics, earned him the Nobel Prize in 1921. His first paper on Special Relativity Theory, also published in 1905, changed the world. After the rise of the Nazi party, Einstein made Princeton his permanent home, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1940. Einstein, a pacifist during World War I, stayed a firm proponent of social justice and responsibility. He chaired the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, which organized to alert the public to the dangers of atomic warfare.At a symposium, he advised: "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task . . . " ("Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium," published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc New York, 1941). In a letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated Jan. 3, 1954, Einstein stated: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," (The Guardian, "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear," by James Randerson, May 13, 2008). D. 1955.While best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"), he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory.Einstein thought that Newtonion mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and did not go back to Germany. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential development of "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" and recommending that the U.S. begin similar research. This eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project. Einstein supported defending the Allied forces, but largely denounced the idea of using the newly discovered nuclear fission as a weapon. Later, with Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons. Einstein was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.His great intellectual achievements and originality have made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.More: enpedia/wiki/Albert_Ebelprize/nobel_prize

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